Reading Festival 2019 was the last time I saw Tord. So next time I see him, it’ll be two years! On our first album, there were only three or four songs where we recorded together as a band. In that respect, we don’t all need to be in the same room to get that energy, somehow. We wrote ‘Method...’ in early 2019, and we had a good demo of it, and Dan could just track the drums to that demo. So long as we’re not doing any tempo changes, he can just be playing along. That was one of the easier parts, really.

Cities, in general, have some kind of energy or dream-like quality to them, which I’m always running towards in songs. My wife and I had this great wedding in Spain. When we went on our honeymoon, we didn’t really plan it; we just got last minute flights and used the HotelTonight app to bounce around Spain and Italy. I think ‘Method...’ is generally about our honeymoon and this feeling that everything could change, but actually, nothing could change whatsoever. Sometimes I need to know where a song is taking place. I have to put it somewhere in my head, and that comes out in the lyrics. It turns out ‘Method...’ was Barcelona.

Ha! It’s not an attack on the music press. It’s a bit of an attack on the pitfalls of social media, and there’s a fair few that go on like this through the album. Generally, it’s very positive and keeps us all connected, but it gets a bit messy at times. For me, “no more subscribing and reviews” is about relinquishing judgement, in a way.

My relationship with social media has changed a lot over the last 16 months. Life is too nuanced to fit inside 280 Twitter characters or whatever it is on Instagram. A lot of those nuances are really important, and they just get cast aside for the main narrative that someone’s trying to push. It started getting me down, so I don’t use it anymore.

I could show you pages of emails from our management trying to get the band on TikTok, and we’re just not responding. I’m sure it’s fun, and I know it’s a good way to promote but, fuck me, there’s already enough of this shit! I can’t get sucked into another thing. I prefer watching films to series now because I’m bored of cliffhangers sucking me in, and before I know it, I’ve lost a week of my life.

It’s just ridiculous, really. I don’t understand it. I know some influencer posted a clip of herself singing it, and then everyone was doing it... That remix was never officially released; it was on some Hedkandi compilation. I guess if you stick around long enough, bizarre things like this are gonna happen.

I haven’t got a good answer for this. We just work really fucking hard, I guess. There have been some moments of adversity in our career, and we’ve battled through. Head down, get on with it. Could you give an example?

After our third album, we played Ally Pally. It sold out, it was such a great show, and then we got dropped by Warner the next day. I took that really hard, but our fourth album [2018’s ‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’] came out of that turmoil, and now we seem to be stronger and healthier than ever. I think we’re the first band to get dropped by a major record label and then get bigger. It’s not something that happens very often!

I just think as a band, we all share a common interest in what gets us going. I guess I have certain melodies that are a bit unusual and certainly with the lyrical content; if a song’s not a little bit weird, I’m kind of bored. When I’ve worked with other artists, I’ve tried to dumb down the lyrics to make it more commercial or whatever. For The Wombats, it has to be weird otherwise I don’t get off on it. It’s one of few instances where you can pigeonhole yourself, and it’s a positive thing. There’s something about that which has stood us apart from, you know, The Pigeon Detectives, stuff like that. Those bands who were probably bigger than us when we started but have died away. There’s something about the weirdness that we carry with us that people gravitate towards.

Well, right now, I need some more signs that life is coming back [but] it feels like such a huge milestone and a real, big sense of achievement to have even booked it, to be honest. I know so many bands who have played massive arenas and then, on their next tour, played tiny clubs. Just because you do it once doesn’t mean you can do it again! I don’t take it for granted.

Taken from the July 2021 edition of Dork, out now. The Wombats’ single ‘Method to the Madness’ is out now.